10 ways to drive photography snobs mad

We’ve all met a photography snob at some point. Invariably it’s the person who likes to wear their camera around their neck on a permanent basis, despite the lack of photo opportunities.

They also tend to bang on at length about which settings they used to take a shot and explain in real time how long it took them to get everything ‘just right’.

If you’ve found yourself grinding your teeth listening to one of them droning on at length, then this article is for you. We’ve put together 10 ways to drive them crazy.

How to annoy photography snobs: 01 Blown-out highlights

Photography snobs are a bit retentive about highlights (ha!), they like lots of detail and don’t like things burned out.

So if you shoot nice, bright high-key shot they’ll start to twitch. It may look good (which means it is), but there’s no detail in the background, it’s clean and white.

They’d really prefer you to make sure that no pixel goes over a brightness of 254, even if nobody can tell the difference between that at 255. They’re also likely to start waffling on about the tonal range of film.

As well has having better regard for what works aesthetically, they need to be realistic and bear in mind that if there’s a naked flame in a dark room, the brightest part of it is probably going to be burned out if there’s going to be any sense of atmosphere or detail in the rest of the shot.

Expose to create an image that works rather than to slavishly preserve the highlights.